I don’t know what law was broken here. If he had admitted to breaking a law, it would have been different. As it was, he was inviolation of the school’s policy. So was the teacher, though. As I said before, the teacher should never have seen the original evaluations. None of them are ananymous if he does.
Actually, you don’t know whether or not the teacher was in violation of the school’s policy when he saw the original evaluations. As i said upthread, i get to see photocopies of the original evaluations that my classes fill in, and plenty of schools have a similar system. They avoid issues of retaliation by making sure that you don’t get to see the evaluations until well after you submit your final grades for the course.
As for anonymity, most academics i know would not even take the time to try and compare handwriting samples in order to discover who wrote a particular evaluation. While teachers do care about evaluations in general, very few of us care that much about any one particular evaluation. And, much as this might surprise some people, most of us also believe that students have the right to remain anonymous. If some student called me an asshole (or something worse) on an evaluation, i might have some mild level of curiosity about who is was, and i’d probably have my suspicions based on how things had been in the classroom, but i certainly wouldn’t make an effort to try and identify the student.
Actually, i don’t think i’d be able to identify a student from their handwriting even if i wanted to, because none of the assessment tasks that i give my students involve them submitting a sample of their handwriting to me. All of the assessment tasks in my courses are completed by the students at home, and are submitted as printed documents. I get through a whole semester without even seeing the handwriting of most of my students, so i would have nothing to compare their evaluations with.
Yes, it was quite a ‘nice try’ to point out that amidst the crap there was an actual criticism of the teacher’s performance as a teacher. You can shift the goalposts or backpedal all you want, but the fact remains that the comment directly addressed the teacher’s job performance, albeit in a flamingly obnoxious manner.
You’re disregarding what I said in order to make your point. I specifically said that we did not know what the situation was, and that it could have been a legitimate complaint phrased obnoxiously. Nobody is shifting any blame to any “victim”. And the day when victimhood consists of having someone say obnoxious things to you is the day the word loses all actual meaning.
First, as you haven’t demonstrated this actually broke any laws. Further, you have not given any reason why a university should be put in the place of enforcing any laws on the books, regardless of whether or not they’re bad laws. Your logic would have justified expelling interracial couples.
Second, you are now using a double standard. You claimed that “meaningful feedback” was the only thing that could save a student from having promises of evaluation revoked. “I hated your class” is not meaningful. That you think it could be “useful” is, to use the word of the thread, risible.
Third, based on the speech codes at the university, repeated evaluations of “I hate your class” could be judged as a violation of their policies.
Fourth, as should be obvious, the text on the speech codes and some harassment laws is overly board and general, yielding an ephemeral and bizarre rule with no hard backing.
Can’t have it both ways.
Nope. I’m not making any assumptions. You’re dreaming up a separate anonymity policy and trying to pretend that if you really want it to be, it’ll be the school’s policy. The school’s policy said nothing about anonymity being waved if you “violate school rules”. Nothing. You’ve made that up and are trying to substitute your fantasy for reality. On the point of criminality, there are actual laws on the books which require someone to disclose certain information if they know a crime is going to be committed. The university, on the other hand, writes its own policies. If a policy is bad and makes no sense, a university can change it on a whim. Pointing out that a university had made a policy is meaningless in a discussion of whether or not it’s a good policy or should be enforced as written.
Fuck, UGA’s own policy on academic honesty say that “Academic honesty is defined broadly and simply–the performance of all academic work without cheating, lying, stealing, or receiving assistance from any other person or using any source of information not appropriately authorized or attributed.”
That means that forming a study group is against school rules. If someone fills out an evaluation saying that she failed the class, and nobody in her study group understood a number of assignments, so perhaps they were too hard… would the professor then be justified in having the school hire and pay for a handwriting analyst and then publishing the fact that the girl failed? How about hiring a private investigator to track down the members of her study group, as they too broke university policy?
A certain Mr. K. seems at home in this sort of policy mess.
Now just quote anywhere in their anonymity policy where it says that violating school rules is grounds for revocation of the anonymity policy.
And yet again, simply saying that bad laws or bad rules should be followed because they are laws, or rules, is nonsense. The University of Georgia also had a staff member interpret one of their policies, making it a violation of their rules to fly the Georgia state flag.
The point is that speech codes that are too wide ranging and amorphous, like GU’s “diversity” codes, yield absurd results. Championing the codes, simply because themz da rules, makes no sense.
And you still haven’t addressed the massive holes in your argument.
I’ll reiterate:
Should the laws and the rules be followed without thinking, with blind obedience? Interracial couples should be punished if not expelled? A woman who orders a dildo should be fined or kicked out of the University? Flying the state flag can get you into trouble?
Are you honestly supporting any of that, or is your logic really a rationalization?
The two problems with this are;[ul][li]A student could also be subject to sanction if he wrote “your class sux”, since this is not meaningful.[*]The way to encourage meaningful feedback is to guarantee anonymity. That is the purpose of the policy. [/ul]If you can violate the anonymity policy whenever a student says something you find offensive, you are likely to get a lot less “I hope you choke on a dick and get AIDS, and your class sux”. You are also likely to get much less “You might be great at chemistry, but I couldn’t tell because your English skills are not up to par” or “your ideas on creationism do not belong in an English composition class” or “try taking a shower once in a while, Ms. Natural”. [/li]
This is like forcing a reporter to reveal his sources. Maybe in the short run, you can catch some malfeasor. The question is, how likely are you to find out about it next time?
Regards,
Shodan
Does anyone actually know if the school HAS an anonymity policy? Or is it one of those assumed rules, like getting to leave if the professor is 10 minutes late?
Bullshit. You can argue that some of the rest of the stuff he said is “criticism” as well. Doesn’t mean any of it is constructive or useful in the context. Trying to sift through the student’s garbage to find the one sentence that is not reprehensible, then trying to imply that that one part is an actual criticism is a reach.
The likelihood of your scenario being true is basically zero. To throw out any “possibility” in order to cast the villain in the best light is WRONG.
You don’t think the teacher is the victim in this case? I think your minimizing the teacher’s feelings and the climate that such an act creates when you say he was not victimized. Yes, there are different degrees, but I think he qualifies. This seems like the situation that has happened with “racism” where people are hesitant to consider anyone who isn’t wearing a hood a racist.
Now you are beginning to argue two different points. I admitted that what he did may not be against the law in Georgia. The comment was made to point out that anonymity should not be expected in cases where people break rules or laws. You seem to be suggesting that students should receive blanket anonymity for anything written on those forms. I contend that most reasonable people would not assume that would be true, and that in an instance where rules or laws where broken, the school would be justified in attempting to find out who the person is when there is a compelling interest to do so.
I assuming you mean when those laws were in place. If that is the case, then sure they would be justified if they wanted to enforce a law on the books. I really don’t know what you were expecting me to say. I don’t agree with all the laws on the books, but a school certainly has a right to enforce those laws in a reasonable way if they’d like. Now that’s not to say that a university has the right to act as an agent of the police, but they have the right to enforce their own rules. The student in this case presumably signed documents that said he’d agree to follow those conduct rules. He breached the agreement, not the school. If you, or the student in question feel those rules are unreasonable, then either of you can lobby to change them. You don’t have the right to selectively follow the rules, even if they are vile things like miscegenation rules/laws. If you chose to break the rules, you chose the consequences. Are you trying to argue that people have a right to not follow “bad” laws?
If a student simply wrote, “I hated your class”, then we wouldn’t be talking now. Why would such a comment not be meaningful? Let’s be clear here, most evaluations I’ve done basically allow for maybe a paragraph to be written. This is not a thesis, it’s not a thoughtful critique, it’s basically a comment card. “I hated your class”, is woefully incomplete, but is does not meaningless, nor does it rise to the level of an investigation.
That’s your opinion, and something that could be discussed in another thread.
Well what does their policy actually say? I haven’t seen it, and I’m not so sure that it promises to complete anonymity like you assume it does. Again, what would a reasonable person assume:
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That a student’s identity would be protected under any circumstances including violation of school rules and laws.
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That a student’s identity would be protected in the course of providing praise or criticism of a professor.
Do you really think any reasonable person assumes that anything they write on the forms will be confidential? I’ll ask my question again, if a student wrote that he and his friends cheat on every test. Let’s say the student admits to hacking the computer system to change dozens of grades. Do you really think that the school shouldn’t try to find out who wrote it?
We are not having a discussion regarding the quality of their policies. We are discussing whether they should have found the kid who wrote the comments.
Bullshit. That is your own twisted interpretation. I will guarantee that student groups do not fall under the academic honesty policy. If you are arguing that it actually does, as opposed to that it could depending on how you parse the language in the handbook, then prove it.
Show me where it says it is irrevocable. Again, put forth some argument that explains why any reasonable person would expect complete anonymity under any circumstances.
Really? Asking people to follow the rules and laws (esp. when they agree to them beforehand) makes no sense? Do you realize how chaotic the world would be if people decide they can selectively break laws they don’t agree with? There are ways to fight back. Expose bad laws to the light of day, or challenge them in court. You can’t just decide not to follow laws because you think they are shitty. This goes double for a situation like this where a student chooses to attend a university, and agrees to these rues beforehand. If you think a school has draconian rules, then go to another school, or try to work to change those rules.
Excluded middle. Laws and rules should always be challenged using the proper avenues and channels. I don’t think you should not follow rules you personally disagree with. While appealing on an individual level, it becomes chaotic when you extend the argument to society as a whole.
Does UGA have a policy against this? Why do you keep bringing this up?
Again, is this UGA policy? If I strongly disagree with a law, I try to get it changed using proper channels. I don’t make blanket statements about how “bad” laws shouldn’t be followed because your version of a bad law is different from mine, which is different from Joe Smhoe.
I am supporting the RULE OF LAW. You want to live in a society, you have to follow the rules. If you disagree with them, you have two choices: Try to get them changed, or accept the consequences if you violate them. Yes, we all have to follow rules we personally disagree with, but that’s the price of living in society. Some people might think laws against theft and murder are equally as absurd as I’m sure you ans I both think past laws against interracial marriage were, but that doesn’t mean we completely disregard our duties as a member of this society.
This is one of those situations where even if the school was wrong for blowing the cover on this student, I just can not get outraged over it. The student’s conduct was so indefensible that on moral grounds he deserved to be punished for it, even if legally he did not.
“Joe Disponzio is a complete asshole. I hope he chokes on a dick, gets AIDS and dies. To hell with all gay teachers who are terrible with their jobs and try to fail students!”
I would be ashamed to go to the same school as this person.
[QUOTE=Shodan]
The two problems with this are;[ul][li]A student could also be subject to sanction if he wrote “your class sux”, since this is not meaningful.[*]The way to encourage meaningful feedback is to guarantee anonymity. That is the purpose of the policy. [/ul]If you can violate the anonymity policy whenever a student says something you find offensive, you are likely to get a lot less “I hope you choke on a dick and get AIDS, and your class sux”. You are also likely to get much less “You might be great at chemistry, but I couldn’t tell because your English skills are not up to par” or “your ideas on creationism do not belong in an English composition class” or “try taking a shower once in a while, Ms. Natural”.[/li][/QUOTE]
Fair enough. I’ve already been called on my awkward phrasing in that first post. I still stand by the idea that the promise of anonymity is only intended to imply to student’s who complete the exercise as intended. Using the word “meaningful” was too high a standard perhaps, but I hope you can look past that to address the point I was attempting to make. I don’t think any student should hide behind anonymity when they break rules or laws.
With all due respect, these are two fundamentally different circumstances. While anonymity in both circumstances can encourage a more honest discourse, there are major differences:
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In your analogy, the university, like the reporter is promising anonymity. Nobody forced the university to “reveal its sources”. They did it voluntarily. They were not compelled in any way that would be similar to the way a reporter would.
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Journalists generally take on the duty to keep the citizenry informed and to report all things newsworthy. Students filling out an evaluation do not have anywhere near the level of responsibility. The environment and the circumstances in each scenarios are different enough to justify the differences in the expectation of privacy.
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Journalists cannot legally withhold sources in many circumstances already. Certainly the erosion of this trust can be troubling, but it is necessary in some cases where peoples lives are at risk, etc.
No he is not a victim. He is not anything close to a victim. A gay man being called a fag is not a victim of homophobia. A black person being called a nigger is not a victim of racism. A woman being called a cunt is not a victim of sexism. It may startle them, it may anger them, it may even hurt their feelings, but it doesn’t make them the victim of anything other than encountering a sexist/racist/homophobic idiot. This insidious notion that somehow everyone has the right not to be offended by anything coupled with a culture of victimhood is poisoning our society. He called you a name. It says nothing about you and everything about him. He’s an asshole. Good Christ get over yourself already.
Let me say first that, for me, it doesn’t really matter.
Even if anonymity is not an explicitly-stated policy, it’s pretty clear from all the comments made about this case by university officials that anonymity is implicit when students fill out teacher evaluations. Furthermore, it’s standard practice across the whole of academia for such evaluations to be anonymous. If any university thinks that it might need to identify the author of a student evaluation for any reason other than a clear violation of the law, they should make that very clear to students.
I’ve done some searching of the University of Georgia website, and i haven’t been able to find a policy for the whole university, nor for the School of Environmental Design (where the professor in this incident teaches), but i have found some suggestive quotes from various UGA websites and syllabi.
From the Lamar Dood School of Art at UGA:
From the UGA Department of Mathematics:
And from a syllabus in the Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication (rtf file):
I think the general attitude regarding evaluations at UGA is pretty clear, and that the student was not unreasonable in expecting anonymity, especially when anonymity is the standard practice across all of academe.
For me, the issue of whether he offers any “constructive or useful” criticism is essentially irrelevant to the bigger issue here.
Had the student made an overt threat, or said anything to cause a reasonable person to believe that the professor might be in some sort of danger, i would have no problem with seeking out the student’s identity. But this sort of juvenile name-calling doesn’t qualify, in my opinion.
While i don’t feel especially sorry for the student concerned, i think that the damage done to the integrity of the system here far outweighs any possible benefit that the professor, the university, or the student himself might gain from the whole experience.
Sorry, but i think it’s precisely the school’s conduct that we need to be most concerned about here. Sure the kid is an asshole and a jerkoff, but the university has a much greater burden of responsibility to its community and to its mission. I would turn your sentence around and say that, even if what the student said was contemptible (and it was), the school’s conduct in this case is so indefensible as to almost completely overshadow the student’s comments.
Me too, but that’s completely beside the point. There are probably a whole bunch of people at my undergrad university that i would have been ashamed to associate with, but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t operate under the same set of rules regarding privacy and anonymity as everyone else.
Thanks, mhendo. It just occurred to me that we’ve gone three pages on that assumption, and I wanted to make sure we weren’t barking up the wrong tree. Nope, anonymity surely was expected.
Let’s look at the big picture though. Where do you draw the line. f the student had admitted to cheating, fixing grades, etc. Would it be ok in that case?
OK, for the purpose of the discussion, i’ll give a little ground, and amend my conditions a little bit.
If the student’s comments do not violate the law, and do not raise suspicions of actual academic dishonesty or cheating, then the student’s identity should not be sought out.
The reason that an admission of cheating or grade fixing should trigger an investigation is that such an admission compromises the academic mission of the university and, just as importantly, affects other students in the class. If one person admits to cheating or fixing grades, then the grades of everyone else in the class have, directly or indirectly, been affected. In such cases, an investigation is necessary.
But the fact is that we can play the “what if?” game all day without arriving at any satisfactory conclusion. The case we’re dealing with is one in which the offense is juvenile and pathetic name-calling. It was not a case of cheating or grade fixing; it was not a case of unlawful threats to another person. It was name-calling. We should be smart enough to understand the difference between silly stuff and serious stuff, in terms of consequences. And this was the silly stuff, in which the university’s “cure” was worse than the disease.
I will restate what I said earlier:
You only get to try to determine the student if you have a warrant from the cops. In other words, you take the statement to the police and if they find in there a statement that appears to break the law, they get a warrant from a judge to get the original documents and anything else to try to the ID the student.
The university itself will never violate. It is just written words at the end of the day.
For the record, I don’t remember being polled by The Big Gay Leadership for my opinion prior to them issuing a statement on behalf of our entire community. 
The only thing I’m angry about was that this kid’s anonymity was breached. I’m hoping his parents have deep pockets, and an excellent lawyer.
You are correct; it was a bad analogy. A better would be a reporter voluntarily “outing” a news source.
The analogous parties would be the journalist and the university. Journalists want to keep people informed, and promise anomymity to their sources to bring that about. Universities want to collect honest feedback on their professors, and promise anonymity to their sources (the students) to bring that about.
I think we would agree that violation of the anonymity of a student could be tolerated in some circumstances similar to the ones you describe - nobody is arguing that a credible death threat against a professor should be protected. But that didn’t happen in this case.
A student made an offensive remark during an evaluation. Nobody’s life was at risk, nobody is going to take this kind of nonsense seriously in evaluating the professor’s performance. Thus it didn’t even come close to meeting a standard that would allow a violation of the promise of anonymity.
Regards,
Shodan
I know, I read the article. The teacher is responding in a way that is antithetical to the idea of a university modeled on free expression and the open exchange of ideas.
The student’s idiotic comments speak for themselves; the fact that the school is going to hound him out for his thoughtcrime sends a message to the rest of the campus.
As already demonstrated, you don’t actually have a standard that criticism has to be at all constructive, “your class sucks” isn’t constructive criticsm by any stretch of the imagination. And if you want to deliberately ignore obnoxious criticisms of a teacher’s ability to teach were still criticisms of his ability to teach, that’s your willful ignorance.
The likelihood is certainly not zero, you have no idea what the actual situation was, no idea at all, and a teacher mentioning his/her sexuality in class is certainly not impossible. As such, your claim that the chance is “basically zero” is bluster based on nothing other than ignorance. Nor is saying that we aren’t sure what the situation was, the act of casting the “villain” in the best light. Admitting uncertainty is hardly casting anybody in any light, it’s saying we don’t know.
And when another drive gave me the finger after they passed me on the right the other day, I was a victim! And when the cashier at the supermarket was rude to me, I was a victim! Whenever anybody on this message board has said unkind things about me, I was a victim!
Ayieeeeeee!
That you feel the need to dress up the events of someone having something rude said to them, as victimhood…
Nope.
Dio wants to treat students like soldiers, you want to teach universities like police officers. Universities’ have the job of educating people, not enforcing laws.
And your absurdity about voluntary codes of conduct ignores that A) you cannot waive your constitutional rights B) you are talking about crimes, not a university code of conduct C) as pointed out by me and ignored by you several times, the codes are absurdly general and open to interpretation.
You’re also talking out of both sides of your mouth when you say that universities should be in the business of enforcing laws, but that you’re not saying they should act as agents of the police. You can’t have it both ways. Either universities are in the job of Law Enforcement, or they’re not. Saying that a university has a right to enforce its own rules is a non sequitor to your claim that their facultay should be Law Enforcement Officers.
…
I’ve been arguing that.
Yes. People should freely violate bad laws. The Jews should have done their best to smuggle their possessions out of Nazi Germany and flee with their lives. Gay people shouldn’t remain virgins because of sodomy laws. Etc, etc, etc…
You want to handwave away a comment about how a teacher was “terrible at his job” by pointing to the rudeness surrounding it… and at the same time, you want to pretend that “I hated your class” is in any way meaningful feedback? What lessons, exactly, is a professor supposed to draw from such feedback? “I should do fewer things that anonymous student A might theoretically hate, if I knew what those things were.”
Someone doesn’t like a class, for unspecified reasons? That’s not a meaningful evaluation by any description.
No, that’s a fact, as determined by their implementation, legal challenges and reading comprehension. It’s also germane to the topic of this thread.
You are trying to dodge the subject.
We were told that the interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences himself said that nothing could be done because the evaluations were anonymous. Nor do you need an actual written policy. Handing out course evaluations to which you don’t have to sign your name is a clear, stated policy of anonymity.
You don’t want to debate whether or not the policies make sense, are coherent or worth following, you just want to debate if the policies justified the university to violate its anonymity policy? It is a sign of the poverty of your argument that you actually claim the university should have acted a certain way because of its policies, without being willing to discussing the quality of those policies or acknowledge that the University could decide not to enforce bad policies and, instead, change them.
You evidently do not understand the words “bullshit” “interpretation” or “twisted.”
Working in a study group is performing academic work with assistance. This is a simple matter of denotation. Is a study group a group of people who assist each other? Is the work they’re doing academic? Are they, thus, assisting each other in doing academic work? Does UGA’s academic honesty policy specifically prohibit students assisting each other in doing academic work?
When you find yourself arguing in the teeth of the facts and using absurd tactics like calling basic word-meaning a ‘twisted bullshit interpretation’, that’s a sign that your argument is poor enough to justify it getting food stamps.
With all that being said, you can guarantee whatever the heck you want, but your guarantees are worth precisely nothing. You might also have “guaranteed” that the “diversity” codes didn’t prohibit someone from flying the state flag. The fact that a minor functionary read them a certain way (due to them being overly broad and non-specific), would put paid to any assurances you could give. As you are neither a mind reader nor a prognosticator, you can not guarantee anything about how the rules will be applied.
You also fail to understand the very basic concept that “how you parse the language in the handbook” is how any rule is applied, every time, everywhere, in all of recorded human history and in the rest of time to come. That’s what it means to have a rule. Someone looks at it, looks at reality, and sees how the rule applies. That’s another massive hole in your already swiss-cheesed argument: if a student wrote about doing work with a study group and a teacher believed that violated the school’s policy, the school could go to draconian lengths to track her and her study group down, and to expose them all publicly.
And you say that it wouldn’t be a legitimate interpretation of the rule, but your own absurd argument already binds you to accepting its use and the punishments that are dished out because of it. That is, if some minor functionary decides that’s what how the rule should be enforced, you are logically bound to support something you believe is a ‘bullshit twisted interpretation’. If that isn’t blindly supporting authority regardless of its actual merits, nothing is.
That’s some really breathtaking ignorance there, brick.
Just as an example, look at your local highway and its posted speed limit. While you’re at it, ask your average cop if he believes he should ticket someone who goes 2 miles over the limit. Or count the number of people who cross the street at some point other than the crosswalk.
Or look at how many people smoke pot.
People already break the laws they feel are bad laws, all the time, every day.
On the other hand, if observing the current world around you isn’t your bag, you can contemplate the moral position you’re taking when your “logic” says that Jews should have obeyed the Nuremberg Laws, headed off to the ghettos, and then not put up a fuss when it came time to get on the cattle cars.
It’s the law, after all. :rolleyes:
“Onto the cattle cars, you can mail your petitions off to the courts after you’ve had a nice shower.”
What startling moral clarity you’ve got there, brick.
“Gay people should never engage in sexual behavior in most states, as it is illegal. Until the laws are changed, they should just masturbate. If they engage in sodomy, they deserve to go to jail.”
Brilliant rules to live by, brick.
- You can’t sign away your constitutional rights.
- It’s a public university.
- A public university, funded by the tax payers, has no right making attendance mandatory on ill formed, sloppily written, overly broad speech codes.
No.
Either you obey a law because it’s the law, or you decide whether or not you’re going to obey it. There is no excluded middle. You cannot kinda-sorta-maybe-partially-obey a law. You either obey, or you don’t. And what you are calling for is blind obedience to any and every law, with the possibility to protest it while you’re already obeying it blindly, because gosh darn it, it’s the law. Obeying a law you don’t agree with, simply because it’s the law, is blind obedience to it. If you automatically obey any law put in front of you, regardless of the law’s individual merits, then you are blinding yourself to the actual laws and blindly obeying them simply because they are laws.
Just pointing out the morally abhorrent position that you support, is all. That you would actually have denied interracial couples the ability to get an education because it was “against the law”, is a vile position.
“Into the cattle cars now, disobeying is against the law. You can protest later.”
“Ms. Parks, I’m afraid you didn’t go to the back of the bus, as is clearly the law. I oppose your actions and you should be punished.”
“Stave and Jerry? Don’t you know that this state has anti-sodomy laws? Take up meditation or masturbation, and I’m afraid you have to be arrested now.”
Your views are morally and aesthetically distasteful and advocate a slavish obedience to whatever any establishment tells you to do. I see no reason to carry on this absurd tangent, and you can feel free to have the last word.